Resting my weary body in Romania

After 48 days of hard traveling, long days of site seeing, and many nights of sampling every country’s food, beer, wine and music – I needed a time out.  The final straw was getting up at 2:30am to catch the flight to Istanbul after a long night of enjoying the Yerevan Philharmonic Orchestra.  By the time I made it to Istanbul, waited for my flight to Bucharest, and then drove my rental clown car to the Black Sea Coast it was nearly 5pm local time and I was spent.  I grabbed a quick early dinner and was in bed and asleep by 5pm and slept for 14 long wonderful hours.

My plan had been to divide my time in Romania between checking out the Greek and Roman ruins up and down the coast and working on an all over even tan.  And as the old Yiddish proverb says, “Men tract und Gott Lacht” (men plan and God laughs) so I woke up to gray skies, thunder and a cold north wind.  Obviously not a fit day for site seeing so why not check out the five beaches I had identified as Rocko Polo worthy.  My intention was not to actually sunbath or swim in the rain but just to scout out the best place to visit when the sun came out.

I started with the furthest beach south right on the Bulgarian border.  Vama Veche is a cross between a traditional old fishing village and a hippy/vagabond commune.  The beach itself is a mix of rundown cafes’, bars and scattered camping tents full of unwashed wasted hippies.  It didn’t take long to figure out that I was the wrong demographic for this beach.  Forty five years ago I might have fit right in but my time for Vama Veche has long since passed.

Next I visited 2 Mai Beach.  I get the impression Romanians don’t have a lot of imagination since they have to resort to naming their towns after days of the year in addition to the town of the 2nd of May there was also a town of August 23.  I wonder if they used every day of the year for some small town’s name and then had to resort to naming towns after household appliances like Toaster or Dishwasher or George Forman Grill, Romania?

Anyway I found the small clothing optional beach pretty easily in a little cove on the south end of 2 Mia.  The beach looked easy enough to get to but the surface looked to be made up of small rocks and shells rather than sand so I moved on to the next spot up the beach.

Constinesti’s Frenchman’s Cove proved just the spot.  Secluded, nice sandy beach, a shallow sandy sea bottom allowing plenty of room to cool off from the hot sun, and plenty of room so people weren’t crowded in on top of each other.  I decided I didn’t even need to look at the other beaches.  This would be my spot for the next three days.

So for the next three days I was worthless.  No site seeing, no exploring and no clothes.  I just ate when I was hungry, drank when I was thirsty, laid in the sun when I felt the urge, cooled off in the Black Sea when my skin got to hot and caught up on three countries worth of blogging that I had been so busy doing that I hadn’t had time to  do any reporting.

So what do I have to show for four days in Romania?  Nine blogs completed, several nice dinners enjoying the twilight over dinners of mixed grills of seafood and meats, lots and lots of uninterrupted sleep and a sunburn in all the wrong places.  And with that I’m off to Budapest.

This blog doesn’t have an abundance of photos because it is considered bad form to take photographs at clothing optional beaches.  Also I promised Erin I would not publish any nekked pictures of me and mortify her. I was very tempted to take a frontal and rear photo  using my Panama hat strategically for cover though.  Since I have had so much criticism for how I look with my Panama  on my head I thought it might be interesting to see if people thought the new location improved the look any better.

Waiting patiently for lunch and the clouds to clear

Sunset dining on the Black Sea

The Black Sea at Frenchman’s Gulf from above the cliffs

Rainbow for my dining entertainment

The best part of a rainstorm – When it stops!

Frenchman’s Gulf – a nice place to loose your worries and your pants!

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